Baan Khanitha & Gallery, Sathorn District, Bangkok

This restaurant (69 South Sathorn Road, Thungmahamek, Sathorn District, Bangkok 10120, tel : +66 0 2675 4200 1) came by a recommendation of a friend, who was also our unofficial day itinerary manager for this trip. In his words, eating Thai food at Baan Khanitha would be very similar to having local food in Long Beach or maybe Tung Lok. One generally gets a superficial representation of what people eat in Thailand, but the said representatives are reflective of the cuisine and are also well prepared.

The restaurant in the night was actually pretty charming. It looked like a wood furnished beach resort of sorts in the middle of the city with art pieces on display.

miang kham

We were first served with some miang kham, which was an appetizer. A Thai styled amuse bouche of sorts if you will. How this worked was basically, one picks a betel leaf and wraps the accompanying items on the side which included dried shrimp, peanuts, diced lime, shallots, ginger, chillis and dried coconut along with a fish sauce and tamarind dip. Of course, I did the wrap without the ginger. This was surprisingly very good for most of us that we ordered seconds. The ingredients that were provided worked very well together in an explosive blend of sweet, salty, sour and spiciness with a nutty element.

rice crackers

Another appetizer which we ordered was crispy rice crackers with a sweet, sour and spicy paste.

pandan leaf chicken

The pandan chicken was delicious. The nicely browned chicken was well cooked and juicy.

deep fried prawn cakes

Another deep fried starter were prawn paste cakes. I think they would have made pretty good bar snacks and certainly did their part in keeping our mouths busy while waiting for the other dishes to be served. What I appreciated about them were that none of the fried stuff we had were overly greasy.

grilled seafood

Here's a grilled seafood platter which featured their gigantic river prawns, regular prawns, squid and crayfish. I'm kinda enjoying the fact that the common crustaceans here are generally bigger than the ones back home which tended to be smaller and more expensive. Nothing very exciting here except for the river prawns and crayfish which I liked better than the squid which suffered from the lack of char aroma and grill marks.

stir fried broccoli

This was the plate of obligatory vegetables for the evening which tasted pretty much like how they looked.

tom yam goong with coconut milk

We had opted for two renditions of their tom yam goong. This white version with coconut milk was delicious. The sour and spicy flavours were heavily bolstered by a rich coconut flavour which resulted in a slightly more viscous consistency which like Thai green curry. Each of their tom yam goong came with two river prawns as well. Would definitely love to come back for this again.

tom yam goong

The red rendition of the tom yam goong tasted clearer, but it also had a more identifiable, yet almost subtle flavour of the prawn heads. Nicely done here.

roasted duck curry

The sweetish, hint of sour and spicy duck curry from Baan Khanitha was interesting. It contained things which I hadn't had in curries before. Besides duck, there were grapes, pineapple, eggplant; those curious looking baby eggplants which looked like green peas. The texture of those little green balls were crunchy with a hint of bitter.

omelette with minced sausage

Their non-excessively greasy omelette came fried with a nice chewy crust. I guess it was that nice browned crust that elevated this from the usual fried egg.

mango with sticky rice

I've seldom, if ever, have had this dessert so I just had to just order them since I was here and it was pretty darn good. The coconut infused glutinous rice was tender and sticky, textured with crispy rice over the top while the mango was juicy and sweet. It would have been better with a stronger citrus but I'm not complaining.

You & Mee, Grand Hyatt, Bangkok

This was a casual cafe (494 Rajdamri Road, Grand Hyatt Erawan Lower Lobby, 10330 Bangkok, Thailand, tel : +66 2 254 1234) that we hit for a quick lunch after we've checked into our hotels. As might be surmised from the name, You & Mee does noodles and quite a lot of it judging from the menu. That was mostly what was available.

I got a bowl of their beef kuey teow in thick soup. It was pretty decent bowl of beef rice noodles with salty meatballs and a savoury sweetish broth which perked up from the dried chilli powder that they had provided on each table. What made this regular bowl of beef noodles more enjoyable were the little dishes of deep fried pork rinds which they had provided. These fried bits were crispy, surprisingly light tasting and made good add on to soak up the broth for extra flavour and texture.

I wouldn't mind coming back again if I'm in the vicinity. Even if it's just for their thick and pulpy cantaloupe juice.

SIN -> BKK and BKK -> SIN on SQ Economy

I'm guessing by logical deduction that airplane food must have gotten better over the years, but they still don't taste very good. In fact, the poached eggs that they served over on the flight to Bangkok was just weird. But I guess I shouldn't expect too much over massed packed microwaved food. Stay tuned for eats at Bangkok.

Gantetsu from Ramen Champion

Here's a bowl of special miso ramen sans ginger from Gantetsu, the guys who're representing Hokkaido styled ramen down at Ramen Champion. For some reasons, I had always had the impression that I never liked miso based ramen and hence, seldom if ever ordered them. With this experience, my perceptions of them have changed a little and the fact is, I do not dislike them. In fact, the thick and savoury miso broth which was mixed with that knob of butter turned out to be quite good. It's now probably more of the fact that I prefer tonkotsu over these.

Yes, there was definitely the tender charshu that featured stratas of fat that disintegrated as you chewed them. There were some menma, negi and a healthy portion of corn as well along with an unimpressive ajitama. The noodles were chewy the way I liked as well. I wouldn't say that I've become a convert to a fan of this particular style, but at least I'll be more receptive the next time an option presents itself.

A blue swimmer crab burger from De Burg

This turned out to be some kind of crab rendition of a sloppy joe from De Burg. There was suppose to be salted egg yolk in there but I could only get the slightest bit of salted egg flavour. Couldn't really identify what else went in there and while this burger of theirs didn't quite suck, it didn't exactly make me want to come rushing back for more again soon. There was actually quite a bit of minced crab meat in the buns and the whole burger was so light that it went down in short minutes.

Inaho's Kitchen Bar, Duxton Road

I've been meaning to update this post for a while, but have been caught up in the past few days with work and the blood soaked feud between the Lannisters and the Starks.

Inaho's Kitchen Bar (60A Duxton Road, tel : +65 9090 6948) is run by a disarmingly curious/friendly proprietress Miho, whom has been living here for the past sixteen years. Curiosity got the better hold of us and we asked about the establishment's clientele. It was mentioned that about 5% at an approximate, wasn't Japanese. When we asked what was the English in the menu for, her three word response was 'sometimes ang moh'.

We ordered a bunch of dishes to try. Their home styled preparation was definitely up my alley. Being both a kitchen and a bar, the food that they served did go pretty well with drinks.

cod roe cream omelette

First up was an almost scramble egg like omelette that was doused in a cream mixed with cod roe. The flavour of the roe were robust in that ethereal cream and we pretty much wiped the plate clean with an extra portion of their freshly toasted sliced baguette.

gyu tan

I couldn't resist having a shot at their chewy pan fried cow tongue which was served thinly sliced. They were beefy tasting. The portions were rather small though. Of course I wished there were more.

grilled squid with ponzu & mayo

I couldn't taste any grill off their grilled squid. In fact, the mollusc tasted like it was braised. To which I didn't have any real complains. The pairing of grated daikon along with their ponzu dressing and heavy drizzle of mayo perked flavours up a couple of notches.

black pepper Hiroshima oysters with bamboo shoots

Miho mentioned that these fat oysters were from her place of birth. They were the largest Hiroshima oysters I've had. Even after they were cooked, these oysters were still a literal mouthful for me. Good enough for returns for sure.

sauteed pork with kimchi 

The sliced pieces sautéed pork actually packed more sodium than spice but I guess this was really just bar food here. Or maybe Japanese kimchi wasn't meant to pack as much punch as the Korean ones? Apart from the lack of the kimchi flavour, this was pretty enjoyable and would have been great to eat with rice.

I'm favourably disposed towards this hideout. Will consider coming back again.